America, stop visiting roadside zoos – they make money from the inhumane treatment of animals

While conventional zoos have moved to enclosures for animals for at least part of the day, animals at some roadside zoos can spend their entire lives in a cage

I have driven by many roadside zoos in my time, but have never stopped at one. It seemed unlikely they could be any less depressing than a conventional zoo in fact, it seemed likely that they could be even more depressing.

Roadside zoos generally provide less enrichment for the animals and less education for their public. While conventional zoos have moved to enclosures for animals for at least part of the day, animals at some roadside zoos can spend their entire lives in a cage. The difference between the two is not euphemistic. At a roadside zoo, a single chimpanzee might live its entire life behind bars on concrete. Half a dozen wolves pace a cage smaller than a studio apartment. Tigers might appear to be surrounded by trees, but there are no trees in their cages they are only a backdrop used to trick the tourist into thinking that the animals live out their lives in a space that is as wooded and lush as the one the tourists are visiting. Roadside zoos are, in many ways, the way conventional zoos used to be before zoo visitors demanded more.

You might have thought that bottle feeding bears, cuddling chimpanzees and swimming with tigers are not things you would be allowed to do, even if you wanted to. But at least 75 roadside zoos in the US sell interactions with dangerous animals, such as tigers, lions, primates and bears.

This information comes from a report put together earlier this year by myself and my colleagues at New York University for the Humane Society. The report which is not publicly available summarized roadside zoos that offered interactions with dangerous animals. Searching both online text and images, we found 77 distinct facilities that allow human interactions with endangered wildlife. Florida alone has 15 roadside zoos that offer these interactions, while California has a dozen. While federal laws regulate animal exhibition facilities, state and local laws dictate whether individuals can possess dangerous animals. So, I decided to visit one of the more notorious roadside zoos that sells these interactions with dangerous animals.

When I arrived, I was asked if I was part of an animal activist group, and was warned to not talk about in person, internet, mail, fax or in any way about the visit, and to not record video or audio. Is there another family activity that refuses these basic vacation rights? (I cant say which zoo because I signed the nondisclosure agreement sent to me as a condition of my visit. An NDA is required for all visitors.)

What about swimming? A roadside zoo charges $200 to swim with baby tigers. Even without the swim component, the Humane Society estimates that a single baby tiger can bring in $65,000 in one summer (assuming 30 photo sessions at $50 per photo and five private interactive sessions at $300 per day, as was documented at one roadside zoo in Virginia). Often, the money is in photographs of the tourists interacting with those baby animals, the preservation of the experience being at least as important as the experience itself.

But life for the zoo animals is arguably more dangerous. The Animal Welfare Act is the federal law that is supposed to protect these animals from poor living conditions, except that it is too weak and infrequently enforced, with inspectors usually visiting facilities once a year. The law also does not extend to all animals reptiles are exempt, for instance, which explains the reviewer who reported that you can pay $5 at a roadside zoo in Florida to get a photograph with a small alligator with its mouth taped shut.

Although government inspections of roadside zoos are rare and the database of the inspection reports is not easy to search, the evidence suggests widespread negligence and cruelty. A 2014 report from a roadside zoo in Arkansas documented a spider monkey that lost the tips of its fingers and several baboons that lost the ends of their tails, reportedly from frostbite. These sorts of reports seem less about documenting enforcement than about formalizing a record of complacency.

That is why one of the first steps to improving roadside zoos is to ban dangerous interactions at the federal level. These would make these animals less valuable and therefore less likely to be bred, mistreated and commoditized. There is currently a petition under evaluation by the government to amend the Animal Welfare Act Regulations and prohibit public contact with big cats, bears and primates of any age.

Contrary to how it might feel, fondling dangerous animals only accentuates the divide between us and them. Havent we done enough to force that divide already?

That any roadside zoo would ask visitors to choose between advocating for animals and entering their zoo only underlines on which side of the fence I would rather be.

About the Author

Leave a Comment:

Name *

E-Mail *

Website

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.